


Let me come home (home is wherever I'm with you)

by 0akdown



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dog fic, Dogs, F/M, Gen, It's just there bc we all know theyre in love for better or for worse, M/M, Redemption, The Doctor shows up later but is mentioned, The master gets a dog, The ship is not the main plot point here, This is the entire plot of this fanfiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:35:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28559196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0akdown/pseuds/0akdown
Summary: The Master gets a dog and gains some humility. Debatably.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10





	Let me come home (home is wherever I'm with you)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this has been brewing in my mind for a WHILE now. 
> 
> I love the Master, I love dogs, this is a win-win, really.
> 
> Feedback and Comments greatly appreciated!

The first thing she becomes aware of is the pain.

  
Her insides are still recovering from bursting, burning, changing, so there’s bound to be some leftover ache. It’s nothing she isn’t intimately familiar with, anyway.

  
The second thing she notices is that she doesn’t know her name. It doesn’t make her panic as much as she believes it should have, so she assumes that this isn’t out of the ordinary.

  
The third thing she notices is that she’s lying in the dirt.

  
And not any dirt, no, one deep breath is enough to tell her where she is.

_  
Earth._

  
Of course, it has to be _earth._

Disgust and anger bubble up in her chest at that thought. Of course, she doesn’t know why it does, but she assumes that she’s in the right here, so yes, damned _earth._

She lets out a small groan as she sits up, which makes her pauses momentarily.

Quickly, a hand raised to her throat and then chin makes her understand.

  
Makes _him_ understand.

  
This is not too unfamiliar, at least. A minute change in the bigger picture, as was his last body.

He was still wearing her dress, splattered with dirt and smoking slightly from the strain of his regeneration. Legs shaking slightly, he gets to his feet and surveys his surroundings.

  
He’s standing in the middle of what seems to be some sort of field and going by the ache in his back and the flattened grass below him, he assumes he must have dropped in from above.

He pulls up his sleeve and there it is, his hidden vortex manipulator that he had used to escape. It was fried, of course, unsurprisingly so, considering the strain his regeneration must have put on it.

  
That must’ve been why he ended up three solar systems to the left of the safe house he was aiming for. Well, it was more of an apartment, really, and a damn lavish one at that. It was always amazing what a few well placed hypnoses and death threats could get you, off the record.  
  
But that was inaccessible now, as he was clearly stranded on this backwater planet with no means of travel. At least not immediately.

  
'' ’Scuse me Ma’am?'' A voice sounds behind him.

He turns around to face whoever dared to interrupt his moment of deep introspection. A middle-aged human is gawking at him, obviously taken aback.

  
''Oh! Uh, s-sir? Well uhm, I’m sorry but I just saw you laying in the field and I thought that maybe uh…'' The man trails off and he (he really needed to come up with something to call himself, at least temporarily) briefly considers murder.

  
He doesn’t though, instead, he shoots out his hand and grabs the man by his face unceremoniously.

The psychic invasion makes the human faint before he was even able to squeal. Drinking in the information he gets from the man, he is able to pinpoint his location a bit better, at least. Evidently, he was in the middle of the English countryside, 21st century. It wasn’t great, but it could’ve been worse, technology-wise.

  
He peers at the man's collapsed form in the field and then down his own body. The dress now barely fits him, constricting his breathing and squeezes his waist and ribcage awfully. Not to mention the heels, Rassilon, what was she thinking wearing those, he could barely feel his toes.  
  
He unceremoniously pulls off the tattered dress and kicks off his boots, before stripping the man's unconscious form methodically. The clothes wouldn’t be an exact fit, since the man was more corpulent and, begrudgingly so, taller than what he could make out of his own, new body, but it was better than nothing.

The cold air stings his naked skin and he quickly pulls on the man's black undershirt, grimacing at the disgusting, _human_ smell of it, and after considering it, also pulls the garish red and black flannel shirt over it. The pants did not fit, but luckily the man was also wearing a belt. He quickly rolled up the pant legs enough so as to not inhibit his movement, and slipped into the well worn brown boots. From the attire (and smell) he figured the man was some sort of farmer, but he could quite honestly not care less.

He spares the unconscious human a last, unimpressed look. He would wake up with no memory of him, likely just assuming he had a wild night out that ended, somehow, with him naked in a field. It wouldn’t be too uncommon for what he knew of humans, at least.

Trudging through the field towards the only paved road he could see, his mind was already racing.

He would have to get somewhere with at least a semblance of usable technology. He would also have to get there with little to no murder, as much as that thought dismayed him. He couldn’t risk being attacked in his current state, not when his body was still in the aftershocks of regeneration.

Even he wasn’t self-absorbed enough to act as if the rules of his biology didn’t apply to him.

  
Now if only he could remember who’s biology that was... But that was not his biggest problem right now.

  
He strides along the road, and narrows his eyes as he could finally see signs of civilization come into sight. The tops of frankly archaic-looking homes rose above the hill he was climbing, and a disgustingly quaint little wooden sign greeted him with the words ''Welcome to Woodhurst''. If nothing else it gave him a name to put to his own personal little purgatory.

''Ah, sonny, excuse me, could you help me?'' A voice, once again, ripped him from his thoughts.

A brittle old woman was calling him over. She was struggling to lift a box into the bed of a clunky old truck, it seemed like. He plastered on a grating, fake smile and walked over to her.

''Oh it would be my pleasure.'' He drawled, lifting the box from her arms and finding, with no small amount of glee, that his physical capacities had finally improved over his last two forms. He set the box down, turning to the woman. He considered knocking her out and taking her truck, but leaving her lying in this weather might as well kill her. Humans were so painfully fragile.

''I don’t think I’ve seen you around, young man?’’ She probes, and he narrows her eyes at her, not dropping his smile.

''Oh yes, the name is-’’ He only hesitated slightly, ''Castor, Castor Regis’’ He finished, pleased at the pseudonym. It was as good as anything, really.

  
The old human raised her eyebrows but shook the hand he held out to her nonetheless. He didn’t waste time to use the physical contact to sneak a look into her mind, scavenging for anything useful-

''That’s quite the unusual name!’’ She exclaimed.

''Yes, well, my parents were quite the unusual people.’’ He retorted, still grinning. He didn’t feel like he was lying, either. Interesting…

''So what are you doing here? Not many people visit our little town.’’ She continued, obviously not willing to let him go without a little bit of painful small talk.

''Oh I’m-’’ He stopped, for a second as he came across something very, very useful in her mind.

''I’m actually here about the house? The one for rent? I saw the ad in the newspaper and thought I’d stop by in person rather than call.’’

  
The house that her grandson was renting, according to her thoughts, had a large barn shed attached to it, that had previously been used as a mechanics shop. Apparently, the basic tools were still all present, gathering dust.

''Oh! Oh, what a coincidence!’’ She laughs, patting his shoulder in what must have been intended as a motherly gesture. He clenches his fist to keep from breaking her hand. ''That’s the one my Billy is renting out! Oh if you would like I can take you there!’’ She gestured to the truck.

  
Well, that was convenient.

''Oh, please, only if it’s not too much trouble!’’ He said, smiling sweetly.

''Not at all darling! Come, I was going to visit him anyways!’’

  
Grinning to himself, he opened the door to the passenger's seat and climbed in.

Her grandson as it turned out, was a local sheep farmer, who had inherited the property from his maternal uncle after he died in a car crash. Castor (he had decided to simply use the name for now, at least until he could remember his own) did not care in the slightest, but smiled, nodded, and offered his condolences at the appropriate times.

After that, all it took was some less than gentle suggestive mind manipulation to make Billy convinced that he was just _such_ a trustworthy, upstanding man that he had no problem signing the house over to him then and there, with the rent paid off for the next month. Or at least he was convinced it was paid off, it was basically the same thing, really. He ushered them out the door of his newly acquired home, the keys to the place in his back pocket.

He quickly surveyed the place. It had been recently inhabited so it wasn’t in terrible condition. The previous owner had left the basic furniture, so he had no need to procure a bed, mattress, desk or kitchen table.

None of this was what interested him, though. He quickly made his way over to the closed up barn shed and unlocked the doors. It was quite large, painted in flaking dark red paint with no windows. Perfect for keeping out any gaffers that might become suspicious of what he would be doing in there-

A crashing noise caught his attention before he could finish gazing over the mediocre but passable array of primitive earth tools hung up on the wall and strewn about the workshop.

Squinting, he grabbed a nearby wrench and followed the sound. The rummaging noises came from a nearby pile of boxes, scrap, and tires, and Castor kicked away the plastic crate construing his view, raising the wrench, before grimacing at what he saw.

Two large, brown eyes, staring back at him.

The disgusting mutt that was cowering in the mess was whining gratingly, looking up at him pathetically.

Castor scoffed. Great, just another one of earth's many primitive, unintelligent life forms.

Yes, that included humans.

He grabbed the dirty animal by the scruff of its neck, sneering at how readily it let him lift it up, not even attempting to fight him.

It wasn’t particularly heavy, evidently starving with it’s ribs clearly visible. Not that he cared much, really. He carried it to the barn doors in long strides, tossing it outside and slamming the doors shut.

  
Now, where was he? Right.

Time to see if there was anything useful to be found in this pitiful human excuse for a workshop.


End file.
